The Homeschool Mother’s Journal–4.19.13

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Sunday- Another loaf of sourdough bread set to rise. Check. Bible reading. Check. Breakfast made for everyone. Check. Church. Check. Rest and relaxing. Check. It was a pretty good day with not a lot going on. It’s also no screen time day. No computers, no video games, no tv. It actually all went rather smoothly; unlike other Sundays. I did a lot of Bible reading while the kids read ‘ahead’ for school. It’s not really reading ahead because we are behind anyway. Dinner was super easy- bean and cheese burritos. I actually attempted to make tortillas with sourdough dough. I got very tired of the work. It kept sticking to the countertop no matter what I did. Eventually, I just made a ball out of it and let it rise for a round loaf. The tortillas, though, were super yummy. I like them better than the usual tortillas I make with baking powder.

Monday- The day started with the kids and I doing some exercise. I’m going to try to get us into a daily routine. We all need to exercise more. After doing our exercises, we discovered how nice it was outside! That meant a walk to the library. That’s where I am right now. School for Monday is much lighter than usual weekdays.

We got home about lunch time and dh came home from work sick. Shortly after that, the electricity went out! Apparently all over town. I’d planned on going shopping and so I did. The kids stayed home and did their best without electricity. It was a little later in the day when we heard about the Boston bombing. Thoughts race in my head but not in complete sentences; it brings such emotion, but not so many words.

We {Lee and I} saw a Northern Flicker and had a fun time trying to identify it. We have iBird Pro 2 on the Kindle Fires so Lee spent quite a bit of time on there looking for this bird. I figured {correctly lol} that it was a woodpecker. Unfortunately we didn’t get a photo of it.

Dinner is meatloaf, supposed to have been made by Fox (aka: Cheffery ) but he was busy so I did it. It is a totally made up recipe so here’s to hoping it’s edible. But really, with meatloaf, if it’s bad, there’s always ketchup!

I’m reading An Unholy Communion by Donna Fletcher Crow. What’d I get myself into!? Also next week the AO group is starting The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy. They recommended this version, but I’m using the public domain and the audio book narrated by Michael Page {highly recommend that!}. And just a few days after that, Brandy from Afterthoughts will be leading a discussion of the 20 Principles from Charlotte Mason. Super excited for those both.

Tuesday- Start the day…with coffee. Of course. Then I made bread pudding for the kids and eggs for myself. Checking my email it is so easy to just delete many of them. Without even reading the contents. I usually check, first, the sender, and second, the subject line. This morning I saw one from Doorposts- O Give Thanks…It reminds me of all that I have that I certainly have reason to be thankful.

It also reminded me of a dream I had. W.e.i.r.d dream. My dd, who in the dream was only 15, not almost 17 as she really is, was being pursued by two young men. They both wanted to court her! Ack! I woke up and realized how fast time is going! My little girl is…not so little. I’m not against marrying young…but well, goodness…My dd can’t be old enough to even be thinking about that! But, honestly, she most certainly is old enough. {To be thinking about it that is.} Oh, and if you read the post and wonder how I made the connection- Pam made mention that her married daughter called her.

Speaking of Lee- she’s had something wrong with her foot for the past week. Pain when she walks. Nothing visible and no activity that caused her to injure herself.

Dinner is fish. I’m looking through the cookbooks to find a nifty way to prepare it as opposed to the usual. Edited: I finally decided to make them individually in aluminum foil, each with it’s own combination of spices. Turned out very yummy. We had fresh broccoli in the aluminum but also some frozen cauliflower, broccoli, carrot mixed veggies.

Fox finished In the Days of William the Conqueror by Eva March Tappan today and  In Freedom’s Cause by G. A. Henty tonight. He finished The Once and Future King by T. H. White last night. I thought that one would be a summer read but since we only get one month for ‘summer break’ he didn’t want to have to do that.

I’m a smidgen over half way through An Unholy Communion by Donna Fletcher Crow and eh, I’m not overly impressed. It’s a LitFuse blog tour book. The tour is scheduled 4/22-5/12. My review will be up sometime between those dates.

Wednesday- No exercise this morning. Fox has Young Marines where he most likely will have quite a bit of exercise and the kids want to walk to the library. If the weather holds out, I plan on working in my garden bed some. I need to keep turning the soil but it’s been way too wet to do so this past weekend. Edited: I did indeed work in the garden, and got a little blister for my troubles So many red worms in my garden! And there was a giant black, fuzzy spider. I just covered him up and let him be; he’ll eat the bugs later.

School is lighter on Wednesdays; but not as light as Mondays. The kids took their walk to the library and I’ll pick them up in a bit. Edited: picked them up and school was finished.

I made –for a snack for myself –a mix of cottage cheese and frozen berries blended with a small bit of oat milk. Actually quite yummy. The cottage cheese is lowfat which leaves a funny feeling in my mouth that I don’t like but otherwise it’s good. Just thought I’d share

Dinner is chicken and green beans. Bread and butter for those who are still hungry.

Tonight I heard about the fertilizer plant explosion in Texas. Terrible.

Thursday- The kids and I went to Willoughby to visit some friends. Lee spent the entire 2 hours outside practicing sign language, while Fox stayed inside and matched ‘wits’ with a 7-year-old playing Super Smash Brothers Brawl. And I? I sat in the kitchen with my friend just enjoying adult company. Oh yes, and her ‘littles’ this time decided to visit.

It was a beautiful day! The temperature got to 80*F, at least. The kids pulled weeds in the front of the house and we turned the compost bin. I actually thought that I’d been super slack and let them get away with not doing much school but looking over their schedules, they did most of what was scheduled.

After dinner of spaghetti, dh and I went to a meeting to plan a ‘family’ camping trip for the homeschooling families of the church. The plan is to do the camping at the end of May. I got voluntold I’d be doing a Survival Station covering First Aid. Um...I was hoping I’d be in the crowd going around to each station, learning along with everyone else. But nope. That’s alright. I really need to work on sharing rather than taking anyway; sharing knowledge rather than just taking it. Lee was also voluntold that she’d be helping to plan some campfire singing; she gets to pick the songs we sing It’s going to be fun! {even if we are sleeping in tents…outside…where there are bugs…*small nervous laugh*}

Friday- It’s raining right now. Well, more like sputtering. It was fairly warm this morning but it is cooling off. The high has been reached; it’s all downhill from here. By this afternoon it will be in the mid-40s; down from 70*F at 6am!

There isn’t a plan to go anywhere today although I do need to get some eggs to be able cook all that is on the week’s menu. Miscounted when I went shopping on Monday, I guess. It’s just icky out though, so I think I’ll make do without. Do you think pancakes can be made without eggs? Or better yet –I can make scones! Eh, we’ll see

For school, I think I will have the kids work on the books/subjects that we are trying to get finished for the year, rather than what’s actually on the schedule. It’s just one of those days/weeks where I could easily say, “Forget it all!” Must stay focused and motivated. It’s one of the hard parts of homeschooling. For me anyway. Edited: Both did really well with decided the things to do for school and it was  a good school day; one step closer to the finish of the year!

Saturday- This post wasn’t going to include Saturday but for some reason, I forgot to publish my post after it was done yesterday! Thursday was so very warm and nice …and then there was Friday with it’s 40s temps. But that’s nothing compared to today! It is snowing. Sigh.

Fox has community service with the Young Marine’s in downtown Cleveland. After he gets home, around 1ish, we are going to the grand opening of the newest library. It closed one that was somewhat close that we loved to go to, but this one is going to be awesome, I think. Looking forward to that.

Homeschool tips…
…When going through my email on Tuesday I saw this: How to Critique Your Young Writer from FiveJs. I thought it was well done. You can see the other posts in the series. Young or not, I think it’s good information.

“Always remember first and foremost, your critiques are meant to help your writer.”

Another helpful homeschool tip is an online group called The Virtual Homeschool Group. They have some science go-at-your-own-pace classes as well as other classes. All the non go-at-your-own-pace classes are full right now but I’m going to be looking at the Fall classes. Just thinking ahead.

Other thoughts…
…I’m starting to wonder if I don’t have some sort of intolerance to some food. There was a week that I had next to no dairy and wheat and had no headaches, no bloated belly. Since I’ve started making the sourdough bread, I have a chronic headache and my sides are super itchy, along with burning sensation in my right thigh. Of course, I’m also using dairy again. I dislike the idea of having a food allergy, or at least an intolerance. I’ve known that milk doesn’t agree with me for awhile now but I’ve tried to ignore it. These headaches lately are making it hard to ignore that there’s something going on.

Since not using wheat {boy that’s difficult btw!}, I do not have itchy sides and only a headache barely that I associate with eye strain instead of ‘just because’. I’ve also lost 3lbs. Not much but I’ll take it!

Updated Saturday: I did not eat wheat Monday morning through Friday afternoon. I did have a slight headache on one of those nights before bed, like I mentioned above. I ended my experiment for homemade pizza {I even made sourdough pizza crust} Friday night. I had a very small, personal pizza with no cheese, just sauce and pepperoni. This may be purely coincidental but I woke up around midnight with heartburn, which I’ve not had in quite a while, that made me puke {the sauce and pepperoni?} and a whopper of a headache this morning and my gut feels like it has lead in it. Also, before bed, I swear my sides were trying to get my attention. I mostly ignored the urge to scratch. So, I’m going no wheat again. And since nothing else is different, I should be able to tell if it’s the culprit.

I rewarded my kids this week by…
…Letting them take time off school to do things they want –go to the library to use the computers. There’s a show that they are watching {manga/anime sort of thing that was recommended by HEO students on the AO forum- not that I recommend the show; it sounds…depressing really} and it just doesn’t like to play on my s.l.o.w. computer.

My favorite thing this week…
…Finding a watch that a fairly recently purchased watch battery actually fits in, and that I would actually wear. I’m happy now. I used to wear a watch all the time but for some reason stopped. I’ve been wanting to wear one again but couldn’t find any of my ‘old’ watches that the battery would fit into correctly. On Wednesday morning, I did.

Link to share…
…The Weekly Barden, our little family newsletter that we share with family and friends {and anyone else that wants to read it}. It’s a Google doc, but can be downloaded as a pdf.
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BzThmlDef-0tYjJfS29fSUJHdk0/edit?usp=sharing

I’m linking up with Hammock Tracks, Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers, The Homeschool Mother’s Journal and Collage Friday (although I’ve only one photo…hoping Mary doesn’t kick me out *wink*).